Different teachers have different issues. One is a renowned schoolbook writer, really excellent. But he keeps telling the students the method of solving a problem, and only one. His way. He feels hurt when we tell, give some room for creative thinking. He says, he wants to teach the students how to solve the problem. However our role is to develop problem solving skills. When it comes to HOTS, the thinking process is far more important than having the right answer. Maybe there is no right answer, anyway.

I encourage the teachers to give real life situations. So in a question Sarah goes to the shop and wants to buy pencil and pencil sharpeners with certain conditions. It is all fine until I calculate and turns out that Sarah will buy 43 pencil sharpeners. I ask the teacher, why does she need 43? He shrugs: “does it matter? Do the calculation.” Of course, it matters in real life. If our answer is unrealistic, it is a good indicator that our way of thinking is incorrect.

The other question goes like this: a student takes 4 toy cars into the class, all are made of different metals. The question is: what metals the cars are made of. Good question, really HOTS, as the student has to come up with a method to find the answer. Then the answer is: one car is silver, the other is gold. Wow, rich teacher! Somehow we are detached from reality. It is ok if the answer is like this: the height of the girl is 6.3 m. When I find out that I will pay minus 6 dollar for the potato in the market, I burst into laughter. I want to go to that market every day.

There is no better way to train our brain than creating HOTS questions. But let’s not forget to interpret, to use the answer.